Top Tips for Teachers on Engaging Parents in Learning

From having parents come in to speak about their jobs to sending postcards home, education experts share advice on parental engagement

 Parents sometimes need advice on how to support children with their homework. Photograph: Alamy

Schools take a variety of creative approaches to involve parents in their child’s learning, from parent-student cooking classes to sending tweets about lesson activities.

We recently ran a live chat for teachers, heads, academics and parents to share their ideas on how to break down barriers, reach those who were reluctant to engage and ensure parents and carers feel that their voices are heard. Here’s a roundup of their suggestions: 

Make sure parents feel listened to

Schools must take the lead and be as flexible as possible. For me that should include, where necessary, a block of time during the school term where teachers and parents are brought together. Having two opportunities a year for parents to sit with a teacher for 45 minutes has been very well received at my school. It’s time for a real and focused conversation about the child, with both sides listening. Yes, teachers listening too. Parents now say they are feeling listened to, and all the technology in the world cannot replace this. It’s a big job for schools to make this work logistically, but it’s so valuable.

• Simon Feasey, headteacher at Bader primary school

The simple things work best

One nice thing the secondary teachers [at my son’s school] do is send a stamped postcard home when my son does a good piece of homework. I may be a techie, but I actually quite like that old-fashioned touch, and it goes up on the kitchen noticeboard and becomes a talking point.

• Tes Macpherson is a tech entrepreneur who set up the parent communication platform PTAsocial

Give feedback

I’ve been in more than one school where staff have said how many helpful ideas parents had given them, while parents said that staff never listened. School staff were listening, but they weren’t closing the feedback loop and letting parents know that their ideas had been taken on board.

• Janet Goodall, a lecturer with particular expertise in parental engagement at theUniversity of Bath

Help parents to support homework

I’ve found through focus group interviews with parents that most are keen to support their child’s learning, but they seek comfort in doing so. Methods in maths is a common talking point. A simple video modelling an approach created by the class teacher or a pupil and uploaded on to the learning platform (with parents given access) can secure engagement.

• Feasey

Be creative in where you hold events and who you invite

One thing I advocate a lot is having events away from school if at all possible. One headteacher did the beginning of the year speech for new parents not at school, but at places parents were already comfortable in. I know of schools that have done things like getting the manager of the local football team to give an address at a parents’ evening – it got a lot of dads in.

• Goodall

Use social media to start conversations

My feeling is that sites like Facebook and Twitter have done a lot to allow schools to openly broadcast the great things they are doing, but at a fairly generic level (nothing too tailored to any given parent or student). For me the next step is to use technology to enable the more meaningful-level communications, securely, and on a regular basis.

• James Whitaker is the founder and chief executive of ParentHub

Five of the best apps that help teachers communicate with parents

 

Read more

Set up blogs

We run blogs for every year group and on specific areas (such as visible learning), and I keep a headteacher’s blog. As well as covering the curriculum and learning activities, we blog when out and about. The year 5 ski trip and year 4 residential trip to France blogs were very well received. Parents responded regularly so there was actually a dialogue between them and the children, even though they were hundreds of miles apart.

• Feasey

Involve parents in action research

A few years ago, I did some research with parents where they chose one thing to work on with their child. For some, it was getting out of the house on time, for others it was a specific school subject. They did this for a term and then reported back. It was great talking to the parents – they felt that they’d taken control of something and dealt with it.

• Goodall

Give a peek into lessons

One school I worked with – in a community where most parents didn’t have computers at home – arranged with the local supermarket to put a computer in the foyer, with videos of classrooms on a loop. Whole families apparently came in to see what was happening. That might be something that could be adapted. I keep thinking about all the digital displays I increasingly see.

• Goodall

Invite parents in to speak

At the last school I worked at, there was a massive drive to improve children’s writing. In order to give pupils more purpose to what they were producing, we invited parents with different jobs into the school to talk about what they did, and more importantly, explain why writing was important to their role. About 40 ended up taking part, ranging from submarine engineers to scientists.

• Ben Culverhouse, a Year 5 teacher at High Down junior school in Portishead

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

I was talking to a fairly new teacher not too long ago and she’d phoned a parent and simply said, “I’m worried about [name]. You know your child far better than I, what can I do to help?” It was a bit of a breakthrough because the teacher was reversing the usual structure and asking the parent for information and knowledge.

• Goodall

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jun/28/top-tips-for-teachers-on-engaging-parents-in-learning

Top tips on handling parents evenings

Parents evenings are one of the best opportunities you can have for building up relations with the home. Experienced teacher Tom Bennett explains how to make the most of them

This is one of the best opportunities you can have for building up relations with the home. Why is this so important? Because if the parents support your teaching, you’ve brought learning home. Few children will misbehave or girn unattractively at you if they know that their parents will descend on them like the Abyssinian hordes when they get home, because between school and home, they have nowhere to hide.

But the converse is equally true: if you lose the sympathy of the parents you might be dealing with little Sammy’s belligerence until Judgement Day. So it makes huge, perfect, glorious sense to make a meaningful contact with the parents or guardians of the students; and parents’ evening is the perfect place to do it.

So your attitude to the evening must be positive. It’s an opportunity, not a chore, despite the obvious loss of the occasional evening you endure. Here are my best tips for making them work:

• Stand up when they enter and shake their hands. Tell them how nice it is to see them, and thank them for coming in. If that sounds obvious then it’s because it is. But I am amazed to see teachers not doing this. Such a simple courtesy, effortlessly creating an atmosphere of warmth and conviviality.

• Start with something positive about the pupil; everyone, no matter how unlovely, has something nice to be said about them. ‘Charlie’s been an interesting boy to teach,’; ‘Ama has made some great contributions to debates,’ etc. Charlie and Ama might have the mark of Beelzebub tattooed on their foreheads, but do this; make an effort. Few are the parents who think their child is the naughty rascal that he or she might appear to be in school; so if you start with something negative (‘Your son is disgusting’) then the parents will instantly be defensive.

• Have some meaningful data available. You should be able to say something about their attendance, punctuality, equipment, progress, behaviour, current grade and prospects. The more evidence you have to support this, the easier it is to convince the parents if there is a problem.

• Have some bookwork to show the parents. This is a great technique, because it is indisputable (see: data, above). The parents can see how well or not little Shelley is doing by the quality of work she produces. If the work is poor, it’s an interesting talking point, and the parent is usually shocked. It’s often useful to have a great pupil’s work to show by way of contrast.

• Be aware of any specific difficulties the pupil may have. If you have a go at Robin or Ray for sloppy handwriting or spelling, and the parent says, ‘But didn’t you know he’s dyslexic, blind and has no hands?’ then you will look exactly like the pillock you are. Same goes for more able children; be aware of the gifted and talented register, and make sure that you know the pupil needs different challenges.

It might sometimes look as though you have nothing in common with the parents, but I guarantee you do: the well-being of the student. If you say, ‘We both want the best for Daniel,’ then you tacitly create rapport between you and the parents because it’s something they can’t disagree with. You do want the best for Daniel, right?

Source: http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/content/tips-handling-parents-evenings

Building good working relationships with parents

Getting parents on side benefits everyone – make contact and listen well

Engaging with parents is one of the more difficult aspects of an NQT’s induction year. You may have excellent subject knowledge and have been trained in managing classroom behaviour, but dealing with difficult or hard-to-engage parents brings a different set of challenges.

A student teacher will have been largely sheltered from involvement with parents on their school placements by more experienced colleagues, but once in the job, this relationship becomes part of the front line of teaching.

So how do you go about initiating and maintaining a good working relationship with parents who may have little interest in their child’s education, or who simply don’t have the confidence to come to school?

“Getting parents on your side is hugely helpful, but failure to do so can be a huge battle, so it’s important to get things right,” says Dr Sara Bubb, educational consultant and teacher trainer at the Institute of Education, University of London. “Those early days are difficult because much of it has to be learned on the job.

“Appearance and perception is the first step because you need to make the right impression, while at the same time getting across the important messages about your expectations.”

Bubb believes that NQTs should appear confident and reasonably assertive at the first meeting, even if they are quaking in their boots. “You also need to look the part; so if you have a jacket then wear it, as it looks more formal,” she suggests. 

Making eye contact and nodding in the appropriate places show that you are listening to the parents, particularly if they have initiated the meeting because of a problem. “You need to leave them in no doubt that they are being heard and that you care, as this can build great bridges in what might otherwise be a difficult or awkward situation,” she says.

Engaging with families in primary schools is nearly always easier than in secondaries. Parents, usually mothers, tend to accompany their children to school and often linger around the school gate, affording staff and especially new teachers, great opportunities for conversations, says Tracey Smith, head of Tower Hill Community Primary School in Witney, Oxfordshire.

The extended services coordinator at the school has responsibility for parental engagement but, of course, it is for every teacher to establish good relations with the parents of the pupils in their class. The school pays a great deal of attention to the involvement of parents, not least because a third of the pupils have special needs and a similar proportion is entitled to free school meals.

“The most important thing is to be available and obvious, at whatever time of the day but particularly in the mornings and at home time when the parents are around,” Smith advises. “Our NQTs wear a badge so that everyone knows who they are and which class they are teaching, so that parents don’t have to ask, as some may feel awkward about doing so. This immediately breaks down barriers. 

“All teachers, including NQTs, have to take the initiative and this is particularly important with difficult or hard-to-reach parents. We set aside a day during the second week in September when parents are free to come into their child’s classroom after 2.30pm to meet new teachers, without the pupils being present. This is mainly to enable everyone to put names to faces, but it is also an opportunity for the teacher to gather information and to inform parents about the boundaries they want to set, their values and expectations, and to convey messages about the importance of the relationship between school and home.

“Parents need to know that we don’t just want to see them if something is wrong or we are going to give bad news, but that it is an ongoing process.”

One way of getting off on a good footing in a new school, Smith suggests, is to write to every child in the class before starting the job. “NQTs need to make themselves known as early as possible, and one way to do this is to send an individual letter or short note to every child’s home, with a brief introduction.

“This helps the NQT to get to know names, but also gets that relationship off to a good start by stating to the family that you are looking forward to meeting them and teaching their children. Parents really like this personal approach.”

At Medina College, on the Isle of Wight, meanwhile, staff set up a Facebook page for parents, which gives them a forum to discuss issues that may concern them. “We have had some fairly challenging issues being raised, which the school may not want publicising to a wider audience, but we believe it makes the process of communicating with parents and the decisions made in school more transparent,” says Nathan Thomas, the headteacher.

NQTs at the school are always given a Year 7 tutor group so that they are both new to the school and can share the journey through the school together. Each tutor group also has two tutors, so the new teacher has the benefit of the experience and expertise of a more senior colleague. An ongoing programme of professional development relating to parental engagement is offered to all new staff and regular meetings are encouraged to foster good relations.

“We are big believers in focusing on the good, as well as seeking help with the negative, so we send home messages in the form of postcards and mobile text messages offering praise for good work and behaviour,” Thomas adds.

Prepare for challenges

The potential for challenges is always present. Broaching difficult issues, such as poor behaviour or complaints about the teacher, needs to be done with consideration for the views of all parties and an NQT should never be afraid of seeking support from a more senior colleague if he or she feels the conversation has strayed into difficult areas.

The Teacher Support Network and Parentline Plus charities carried out research three years ago into the relationships between teachers and parents, and sent its recommendations to the government and schools.

It advises schools to appoint a member of staff as a parent support worker with expertise in dealing with a range of family issues that may affect pupil learning. This worker should be a visible part of the school community and help to support the school and families in understanding their roles.

Furthermore, it says that all school staff should be trained in parental engagement, and schools should focus more on accurately appraising a child’s progress rather than just reporting the positives or negatives.

Highly effective strategies for engaging parents are becoming increasingly embedded in schools with the national roll-out of the Achievement for All programme. Piloted four years ago and used primarily to target vulnerable groups and pupils with special needs, AfA comprises a framework for raising achievement with parental involvement at its heart.

Links with parents are established and maintained through the use of a “structured conversation”, in which staff initiate discussions about what strategies should be employed to best serve the interests of the child. By taking part in these talks, parents play a role in supporting the school.

Contact points

In most schools, specific members of staff are assigned to liaise with parents, but these approaches are eventually cascaded down to all staff, including NQTs. 

“We have a family liaison officer who instigates the contact but even so, some parents remain reluctant,” says Paul Green, head of Lyng Hall School in Coventry, one of the AfA pilot schools. “There has to be information-sharing on all sides, with a clear dialogue about academic outcomes.”

He adds that although instigating and maintaining links with parents might be difficult for NQTs, it was for more senior colleagues to guide and support them, whether this be their mentor during the induction year, the head of department or head of year. 

Schools using the AfA scheme have become more creative about how to engage parents. Some have held initial meetings in the family home, or organised neutral venues if the parents expressed a reluctance to come to the school.

“NQTs should be made aware of school policies in relation to parental engagement so they don’t do anything that might contravene and therefore undermine that,” Green warns. “I have not yet met a parent who does not want their child to do well, but we have to break down barriers and it is usually teachers that must take the initiative.”

Rachel Barrell, course leader for primary teacher education at the University of Worcester, agrees and believes that if NQTs can get the relationship right with parents, they can secure a valuable ally.

“Parents know their children better than anyone else and can provide valuable insights into their behaviour, interests and motivations,” she says. “For children with complex needs, particularly, it is the parents who may be able to help the teachers to get the best out of them and that interaction is really important.

“Engaging with parents should never be an inconvenience – it is an integral part of the learning process.”